
Qass_ 

Book ;Vjf^g,2 





Memorial Address 



ON THE 



IFE AND LHARACTER 



Life and C 



James Abram Garfield, 

Delivered before both Houses of Congress, at their request, in the 
Hall of the House of Representatives, 



Hon. JAMES G. BLAINE. 



TWENTY-SEVENTH OF FEBRUARY, 1882, 





^^'^ WASHlH«$'' 



1882. 







MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

ON THE 

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 

BT THE 

Hon. James G. Blaine. 



The Senate and House having assembled in the Hall of the House of Representa- 
tives, the President xJi'o tempore of the Senate announced that the day had been 
dedicated by Congress for memorial services upon the late President, James A. 
Gabfield, and having introduced the orator selected for the occasion — 

Mr. BLAINE said : 

Mr. President : For the second time in this generation the great 
departments of the Government of the United States are assembled 
in the Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a mur- 
dered President. Lincoln fell at the close of a mighty struggle in 
which the passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical 
termination of his great life added but another to the lengthened 
succession of horrors which had marked so many lintels with the 
blood of the first born. Garfield was slain in a day of peace, when 
brother had been reconciled to brother, and when anger and hate 
had been banished from the land. "Whoever shall hereafter draw 
the portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited 
where such example was last to have been looked for, let him not 
give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the 
face black with settled hate. Let him draw, rather, a decorous 
smooth-faced, bloodless demon ; not so much an example of human 
nature in its depravity and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal 
being, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his char- 
acter." 

From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the uprising 
against Charles I, about twenty thousand emigrants came from 
old England to New England. As they came in pursuit of intellec- 
tual freedom and ecclesiastical independence rather than for worldly 
honor and profit, the emigration naturally ceased when the contest 
for religious liberty began in earnest at home. The man who struck 
his most eftective blow for freedom of conscience by sailing for the 
colonies in 1620 would have been accounted a deserter to leave after 
1640. The opportunity had then come on the soil of England for that 
great contest whichestablishedtheauthority of Parliament, gave re- 
ligious freedom to the people, sent Charles to the block, and commit- 
ted to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the supreme executive authority 
of England. The English emigration was never renewed, and from 
these twenty thousand men, with a small emigration from Scotland 
and from France, are descended the vast numbers who have New 
England blood in their veins. 

3 



Memorial Address. 



In 108.') the ifvucation of the edict of Xautes by Louis XIV scat- 
t^ered to other countries four hundred thousand' Protestants, who 
were anion <i th(> most intelli<ient and enterprising of French sub- 
jects — nitTchanis of capital, skilled manufacturers, and handicrafts- 
men, superior at the time to all others in Europe. A considerable 
numl)er of these Huguenot French came to America; a few landed 
in New England and became honorably prominent in its history. 
Their nanii^s have in large part become anglicized, or have disap- 
jieared, l)iit their blood is traceable in many of the most reputable 
families, and rheir fame is perpetuated in honorable memorials and 
useful institutions. 

From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-Hu- 
guenot, came the late President — his father, Abram Gartield, being 
descended from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballon, from the other. 

It was good stock on both sides — none better, none braver, none 
truer. There was in it an inheritance of coiirage, of manliness, of im- 
l)erishable love of liberty, of undying adherence to principle. Gar- 
tield was proud of his blood; and, with as much satisfaction as if he 
were a British nobleman reading his stately ancestral record in 
Burke's Peerage, he spoke of himself as ninth "in descent from those 
who would not endure the oppression of the Stuarts, and seventh in 
descent from the brave French Protestants who refused to submit to 
tyranny even from the Grand Monarque. 

General Gartield delighted to dwell on these traits, and, during his 
only visit to England, he busied himself in discovering every trace of 
his forefathers in parish registries and on ancient army rolls. Sitting 
with a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons, one night aftel- 
a long day's labor in this field of research, he said, with evident ela- 
tion, that in every war in which for three centuries patriots of Eng- 
lish blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional government 
and human liberty, his family had been represented. They were at 
Marston Moor, at Naseby, and at Preston ; they were at Bunker Hill, 
at Saratoga, and at Monmouth, and in his own person had battled 
for the same great cause in thawar which preserved the Union of the 
States. 

Losing his father before he was two years old, the early life of Gar- 
tield was one of privation, but its poverty has been made^ indelicately 
and unjustly prominent. Thousands of readers have imagined him 
as the ragged, starving child, whose reality too often greets the eye 
in t he squalid sections of our larjje cities. General Gartield's infancy 
and youth had none of their destitution, none of their pitiful features 
apjiealing to the tender heart and to the open hand of charity. He 
was a poor boy in the same sense in which Henry Clay was a poor 
boy; in which Andrew .lacksou was a poor boy;' in which Daniel 
Webster was a j)oor boy; in the sense in which a large majority of 
the eminent men of America in all generations have been poor boys. 
Before a great multitude of men, in a public speech, Mr. Webster 
bore this testimony: 

It ditl not li.nppen to me to be bom in a loj; cabin, bnt mv older brothers .and 
omterH wj-ie born in a loc cabin raised amid the snow-drifts of'Xew Hampshire at 
11 jtcriod HO early that when the finioke rose first from its rude chimney and curled 
ov.T the frozen liills tliere was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation 
t.«-twfcn It and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist 
I iiiuke io It an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hard- 
-liipM cndunil liy the ^'ciicrations which have ;:one before them. 1 love to dwell 



yVlEMORlAL y^DDRESS. 



ou the tender recollectious, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching 
narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family 
abode. 

With the requisite change of sceue the same words would aptly 
Ijortray the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the fr6utier, 
where all are engaged in a common struggle and where a common 
sympathy and hearty co-operation lighten the burdens of each, is a very 
difterent poverty, different in kind, different in influence and effect 
from that conscious and humiliating indigence which is every day 
forced to contrast itself with neighboring wealth ou which it feels a 
sense of grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed 
no poverty. It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the bound- 
less possibilities of the future always opening before it. No man 
ever grew up in the agricultural regions of the West where a house- 
raising, or even a corn-husking, is matter of common interest and 
helpfulness, with any other feeling than that of broad-minded, gen- 
erous independence. This honorable independence marked the youth 
of Garfield as it marks the youth of millions of the best blood and 
brain now training for the future citizenship and future government 
of the Eepublic. Garfield was born heir to land, to the title of free- 
holder, which has been the patent and passport of self-respect with 
the Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist and Horsa landed on the 
shores of England. His adventure on the canal — an alternative be- 
tween that and the deck of a Lake Erie schooner — was a farmer boy's 
device for earning money, just as the New England lad begins a pos- 
sibly great career by sailing before the mast ou a coasting vessel or 
on a merchantman bound to the farther India or to the China seas. 

No manly man feels anything of shame in looking back to early 
struggles with adverse circumstances, and no man Jfeels a worthier 
pride than when he has conquered the obstacles to his progress. 
But no one of noble mould desires to be looked upon as having occu- 
pied a menial i)osition, as having been repressed by a feeling of in- 
feriority, or as having suffered the evils of poverty until relief was 
found at the hand of charity. General Garfield's youth presented 
no hardships which family love and family energy did not overcome, 
subjected him to no privations which he did not cheerfully accept, 
and left no memories save those which were recalled with delight, 
and transmitted with profit and with pride. 

Garfield's early opportunities for securing an education were ex- 
tremely limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense 
desire to learn. He could read at three years of age, and each winter 
he had the advantage of the district school. He read all the books 
to be found within the circle of his acquaintance ; some of them he 
got by heart. While yet in childhood he was a constant student of 
the Bible, and became familiar with its literature. The dignity and 
earnestness of his speech in his maturer life gave evidence of this 
early training. At eighteen years of age he was able to teach school, 
and thenceforward his ambition was to obtain a college educa ion. 
To this end he bent all his efforts, working in the harvest field, at 
the carpenter's bench, and, in the winter season, teaching thd com- 
mon schools of the neighborhood. While thus laboriously occapied 
he found time to prosecute his studies, and was so successful that at 
twenty-two years of age he was able to enter the junior class at 
Williams College, then under the presidency of the venerable and 



'Memorial ;^ddress. 



honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the fullness of his powers, survives 
fh«' oiuinout i)upil to whom he was of inestimable service. 

The history of Garfield's life to this period presents no novel fea- 
tures, lie had undoubtedly shown perseverance, self-reliance, self- 
sacritice, and ambition — qualitieswhich, belt said for the honor of our 
country, are everywhere to be found among the young men of Amer- 
ica. But from his graduation at Williams onward, to the hour of 
his tragical death,* Garfield's career was eminent and exceptional. 
Slowly working through his educational period, receiving his diploma 
when twenty-four years of age, he seemed at one bound to spring 
into conspicuous and brilliant success. Within six years he was 
successively president of a college. State senator of Ohio, major-gen- 
eral of the Army of the United States, and Representative-elect to the 
National Congress. A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, 
within a jieriodso brief and to a man so young, is without precedent 
or parallel in the history of the country. 

Garfield's army life was begun with no other military knowledge 
than such as he had hastily gained from books in the few months 
preceding his march to the field. Stepping from civil life to the bead 
of a regiment, the first order he received when ready to cross the Ohio 
was to assume command of a brigade, and to operate as an independ- 
ent force in Eastern Kentucky. His immediate duty was to check 
the advance of Humphrey Marshall, who was marching down the 
Big Sandy with the intention of occupying, in connection with other 
confederate forces, the entire territory of Kentucky, and of precipitat- 
ing the State into secession. This was at the close of the year 1861. 
Seldom, if ever, has a young college professor been thrown into a more 
embarrassing and discouraging position. He knew just enough of 
military science, as he expressed it himself, to measure the extent of 
his ignorance, and with a handful of men he was marching, in rough 
winter weather, into a strange country, among a hostile population, 
to confront a largely superior force under the command of a distin- 
guished graduate of West Point, who had seen active and important 
6e^^^ce in two preceding wars. 

The result of the campaign is matterof history. The skill, the endur- 
ance, the extraordinary energy shown by Garfield, the courage he 
imparted to his men, raw and untried as himself, the measures he 
adopted to increase his force and to create in the enemy's mind ex- 
aggerated estimates of his numbers, bore perfect fruit in the routing 
of Marshall, the capture of his camp, the dispersion of his force, and 
the eniaiieipation of an important territory from the control of the 
rebellion. Coming at the close of a long series of disasters to the 
Union arms, Garfield's victory had an unusual and extraneous im- 
portance, and in the popular judgment elevated the young com- 
mander to the rank of a niilitary hero. With less than two thousand 
min in his entire command, with a mobilized force of only eleven 
hundred, without cannon, he had met an army of five thousand and 
d(!f«-ate(i them — ilriving Marshall's forces successively from two 
strongholds of their owii selection, fortified with abundant artillery. 
Major-General Buell, commanding the Department of the Ohio, an 
expLTionced and able soldier of the regular Army, published an order 
of thanks and congratulation on the brilliant restfltrof the Big Sandy 
campaign, which would have turned the head of aless cool andsensible 
mail than Garfield. Buell declared that his services had called into 



Memorial ;^ddress. 



actiou the highest qualities of a soldier, and President Lincoln sup- 
plemented these words of praise by the more substantial reward of a 
brigadier-general's commission, to bear date from the day of his deci- 
sive victory over Marshall. 

The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its bril- 
liant beginning. With his new commission he was assigned to the 
command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio, and took part in the 
second and decisive day's fight in the great battle of Shiloh. The 
remainder of the year 1862 was not especially eventful to Garfield, 
as it was not to the armies with which he was serving. His practi- 
cal sense was called into exercise in completing the task, assigned 
him by General Buell, of reconstructing bridges and re-establishing 
lines of railway communication for the Army. His occupation in 
this useful but not brilliant field was varied by service on courts- 
martial of importance, in which department of duty he won a valuable 
reputation, attracting the notice and securing the approval of the 
able and eminent Judge-Advocate-General of the Army. That of 
itself was warrant to honorable fame ; for among the great men who 
in those trying days gave themselves, with entire devotion, to the 
service of their country, one who brought to that service the ripest 
learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most varied attainments, 
who labored with modesty and shunned applaiise, who in the day 
of triumph sat reserved and silent and grateful — as Francis Deak in 
the hour of Hungary's deliverance — was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, 
who in his honorable retirement enjoys the respect and veneration of 
all who love the Union of the States. 

Early in 1863 Garfield was assigned to the highly important and 
responsible post of chief of staff to General Rosecrans, then at the head 
of the Army of the Cumberland. Perhaps in a great military cam- 
paign no subordinate officer requires sounder judgment and quicker 
knowledge of men than the chief of staff" to the commanding general. 
An indiscreet man in such a position can sow more discord, breed 
more jealousy and disseminate more strife than any other officer in 
the entire organization. When General Garfield assumed his new 
duties he found various troubles already well developed and seriously 
affecting the value and efficiency of the Army of the Cumberland. 
The energy, the impartiality, and the tact with which he sought to 
aUay these dissensions, and to dischai'ge the duties of his new and 
trying position will always remain one of the most striking proofs ot 
his great versatility. His military duties closed on the memorable 
field of Chickamauga, a field which, however disastrous to the Union 
arms, gave to him the occasion of winning imperishable laurels. The 
very rare distinction was accorded him of a great promotion for his 
bravery on a field that was lost. President Lincoln appointed him 
a major-general in the Army of the United States for gallant and 
meritorious conduct in the battle of Chickamauga. 

The Army of the Cumberland was reorganized under the command » 
of General Thomas, who promptly offered Garfield one of its divis- 
ions. He was extremely desirous to accept the position, but was 
embarrassed by the fact that he had, a year before, been elected to 
Congress, and the time when he must take his seat was drawing 
near. He preferred to remain in the military service, and had within 
his own breast the largest confidence of success in the wider field 
which his new rank opened to him. Balancing the arguments on the 



Memorial ^^ddress. 



one side aud the other, auxious to determine what was for the best, 
dfsirous above all thiugs to do his patriotic duty, he waS<decisiyely 
iiilhienced by the advice of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, 
both of whom assured him that he could, at that time, be of especial 
value in the House of Representatives. He resigned his commission 
of major-general on the 5th day of December, 1863, aud took Ms 
seal in the House of Representatives on the 7th. He had served two 
years and four months in the Ai-my, aud had just completed Ms 
thirty-second year. , 

The Thirty-eighth Congress is pre-eminently entitled in history to 
the desiguation of the War Congress. It was elected wJiile the war 
was llagrant, and every member was chosen upon the issues involved 
in the continuance of' the struggle. The Thirty -seventh Congress 
had, indeed, legislated to a large extent on war measures, but it was 
chosen before any one believed that secession of the States would be 
actually attempted. The magnitude of the work which fell upon its 
successor was unprecedented, both in respect to the vast sums of 
money raised for the support of the Army and. Navy, aud of the new 
and extraordinary powers of legislation which it was forced to exer- 
cise. Only twcTity-four States were represented, and one hundred 
and eighty-two members were upon its roll. Among these were 
uuiny distiuguished party leaders on both sides, veterans in the pub- 
lic service, with established reputations for ability, and with that 
skill which comes only from parliamentajy experience. Into this 
assemblage of men Garlield entered without special preparation, and 
it might almost be said unexpectedly. The question of taking com- 
maml of a division of troops under General Thomas, or taking his 
seat in Congress, was kept open till the last moment, so late, indeed, 
that the resignation of his military commission and his appearance 
in the House were almost contemporaneous. He wore the uniform of 
a major-general of the United States Army ou Saturday, and on Mon- 
day, in civilian's dress, he answered to the roll-call as a Representa- 
tive in Congress from the State of Ohio. 

He was especially fortunate in the constituency which elected him. 
Descended almost entirely from Xew England stock, the men of the 
Ashtabula district were intensely radical ou all questions relating 
to human rights. Well-educated, thrifty, thoroughly intelligent in 
affairs, acutely discerning of character, not quick to bestow contidence, 
aud slow to withdraw it, they were at once the most helpful and most 
exacting of supporters. Their tenacious trust in men in whom they 
have once conhded is illustrated by the unparalleled fact that EUsha 
Whittlesey, Joshua R. Giddings, and James A. Garfield represented 
the district for lifty-lbur years. 

There is no test of a man's ability in any department of public life 
more severe than service in the House of Representatives ; there is 
no place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously 
acfiuinnl, or to eminence won outside ; no i)lace where so Uttle cou- 
sideratiou is shown for the feelings or the failures of beginuers. 
What a man gains in the House he gains by sheer force of his own 
character, aud if he loses and falls back ho must expect no mercy, 
and will receive no sympathy. It is a held in which the survival of 
the 8tron<;est is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can deceive 
and no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth 
is iniparlially weighed, his rankis irreversibly decreed. 



MeMOI^IAL ;^DDRESS. 



With possibly a single exception Garfield was the youngest mem- 
ber in the House when he entered, and was but seven years from his 
college graduation. But he had uot been in his seat sixty days before 
his ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the 
front with the confidence of one who belonged there. The House was 
crowded with strong men of both parties ; nineteen of them have since 
been transferred to the Senate, and many of thoni have served with 
distinction in the gubernatorial chairs of their respective States, and 
on foreign missions of great consequence ; but among them all none 
grew so rapidly, none so firmly as Garfield. As is said by Trevelyan 
of his parliamentary hero, Garfield succeeded "because all the world 
in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because 
when once in the front he jilayed his part with a prompt intrepidity 
and a commanding ease that were but the outward symptoms of the 
immense reserves of energy, on which it was in his power to draw." 
Indeed the apparently reserved force which Garfield possessed was 
one of his great characteristics. He never did so well but that it 
seemed he could easily have done better. He never expended so much 
strength but that he seemed to be holding additional power at call. 
This is one of the happiest and rarest distinctions of an effective 
debater, and often counts for as much in persuading an assembly as 
the eloquent and elaborate argument. 

The great measure of Garfield's fame was filled by his service in 
the House of Representatives. His military life, illustrated by hon- 
orable performance, and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt, pre- 
maturely terminated, and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as 
to what he might have done in a field, where the great prizes are 
so few, cannot be profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a sol- 
dier he did his duty bravely ; he did it intelligently ; he won an 
enviable fame, and he retired from the service without blot or breath 
against him. As a lawyer, though admirably equipped for the pro- 
fession, he can scarcely be said to have entered on its practice. The 
few efforts he made at the bar were distinguished by the same high 
order of talent which he exhibited on every field where he was put to 
the test, and if a man may be accepted as a competent judge of his 
own capacities and adaptations, the law was the profession to which 
Garfield should have devoted himself. But fate ordained otherwise, 
and his reputation in history will rest largely upon his service in the 
House of Representatives. That service was exceptionally long. 
He was nine times consecutively chosen to the House, an honor en- 
joyed by not more than six other Representatives of the more than 
five thousand who have been elected from the organization of the 
Government to this hour. 

As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely joined, 
where the position had been chosen and the ground laid out, Gar- 
field must be assigned a very high rank. More, perhaps, than any 
man with whom he was associated in i3ublic life, he gave careful and 
systematic study to public questions and he came to every discussion 
in which he took part with elaborate and complete preparation. He 
was a steady and indefatigable worker. Those who imagine that 
talent or genius can supply the place or achieve the results of labor 
will find no encouragement in Garfield's life. In preliminary work he 
was apt, rapid, and skillful. He ijossessed in a high degree the power 
of readily absorbing ideas and facts, and like Dr. Johnson, had the 



art of yetting from :t book all tbat was of value in it by a readlDg 
appareutly so quick aud cursory that it seemedlike a mere glauce at 
the table of oouteuts. He was a pre-eminently fair and candid man 
in tlebate, took no petty advantage, stooped to no unworthy methods, 
avoided i)ersonal allusions, rarely appealed to prejudice, did not seek 
to inllanie ]iassion. He bad a quicker eye for the strong point of his 
adviTsary than for his weak point, and on his own side he so mar- 
shaled his weighty arguments as to make his hearers forget any pos- 
sible lack in the complete strength of his position. He had a habit 
of stating his ojjponent's side with such amplitude of fairness and such 
liberality of concession that liis followers often complained that he 
was giving his case away. But never in his prolonged participation 
in the proceedings of the House did he give bis case away, or fail 
in the judgment of competent and impartial listeners to gain the 
mastery. 

These characteristics, which marked Garfield as a great debater, 
(lid not, however, make him a great parliamentary leader. A parlia- 
mentary leader, as that term is understood wherever free represent- 
ative government exists, is necessarily and very strictly the organ 
of his i)arty. An ardent American defined the instinctive warmth of 
patriotism when he offered the toast, "Our country, always right; 
but right or wrong, our country." The parliamentary leader who 
has a body of followers that will do and dare and die for the cause, 
is one who believes his party always right, but right or wrong, is 
for bis i)arty. No more important or exacting duty devolves upon 
him than the selection of the iield and the time for contest. He 
must know not merely how to strike, but where to strike and when 
to strike. He often skillfully avoids the strength of his opponent's 
position and scatters confusion in his ranks by attacking an exposed 
point when really the rigbteousuess of the cause and the strength of 
logical intrenchnient are against him. He conquers often both 
against the right and the heavy battalions; as when young Charles 
Fox, in the days of his Toryism, carried the House of Commons 
against justice, against its immemorial rights, against his own con- 
victions, if, indeed, at that period Fox had convictions, and, in the 
interest of a corrupt administration, in obedience to a tyrannical sov- 
ereign, drove Wilki-s from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex 
bad chosen him and installed Luttrell, in defiance not merely of law 
but of jiuldic decency. For an achievement of that kind Garfield was 
dis(|ualilie(l— tlisquahfied by the texture of his mind, by the honesty 
ol^ bis heart, by his eonseience, aud by every instinct and aspiration 
of bis nature. 

Tlie three most distinguished parliainentarv leaders hitherto devel- 
oped in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Thaddeus 
•Stevens. Each was a man of consummate ability, of great earnestness, 
ol intense i)ersonality, dillering widely, each from the other, and yet 
with a signal trait in eonimon — the power to command. In the give- 
and-take ol'.laiiy discussion, in tiie art of controlling and consolidat- 
ing nluetant and refractory followers; in the skill to overcome aU 
forms ol opjiositiou, and to meet with competency and courage the 
varying i)baHe8 of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it 
would be dillbiilt t<. rank with these a fourth name in all our Con- 
gressional bistoi y. Hilt of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, 
I.erbaps, bi- ini]ius>;ibl,. i,, iiiid in the parliamentary annals of the 



yVlEMORIAL yiiDDRESS. 11 



world a parallel to Mr. Clay, iu 1841, wheu at sixty-four years of age 
he took the control of the Whig party from the President who had re- 
ceived their suffrages, against the power of Webster in the Cabinet, 
against the eloquence of Choate in the Senate, against the herculean 
efforts of Caleb Cushiug and Henry A. Wise iu the House. In un- 
shared leadership, in the pride and plenitude of power, he hurled 
against John Tyler with deepest scorn the mass of that conquering 
column which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his admin- 
istration to seek shelter behind the lines of his political foes. Mr. 
Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful when, in 1854, 
against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the 
wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts 
and even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant Con- 
gress into a repeal of the Missouri compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens 
in his contests from 1865 to 1888 actually advanced his parliamentary 
leadership until Congress tied the hands of the President and gov- 
erned the country by its own will, leaving only perfunctory duties to 
be discharged by the Executive. With two hundred millions of pat- 
ronage in his hands at the opening of the contest, aided by the active 
force of Seward in the Cabinet and the moral power of Chase on the 
bench, Andrew Johnson could not command the support of one-third 
iu either House against the parliamentary uprising of which Thad- 
deus Stevens was the animating spirit and the unquestioned leader. 

From these three great men Garfield differed radically, differed in 
the quality of his mind, in temperament, in the form and phase of am- 
bition. He could not do what they did, but he could do what they 
could not, and in the breadth of his Congressional work he left that 
which will longer exert a potential iuflueuce among men, and which, 
measured by the severe test of posthumous criticism, will secure a 
more euduriug and more enviable fame. 

Those unfamiliar with Garfield's industry, and ignorant of the 
details of his work, may, in some degree, measure them by the annals 
of Congress. No one of the generation of public men to which he 
belonged has contributed so much that will be valuable for future 
reference. His speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all 
of them well studied, carefully phrased, and exhaustive of the sub- 
ject under consideration. Collected from the scattered pages of 
ninety royal octavo volumes of Congressional record, they would 
present an invaluable compendium of the political history of the 
most important era through which the National Government has ever 
passed. Wheu the history of this period shall be impartially written, 
when war legislation, measures of reconstruction, protection of hu- 
man rights, amendments to the Constitution, maintenance of ljublic 
credit, steps toward specie resumption, true theories of revenue may 
be reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice and disconnected from par- 
tisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their true 
value, and will be found to comprise a vast magazine of fact and 
argument, of clear analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no 
other authority were accessible, his speeches in the House of Repre- 
sentatives from December, 1863, to Juue, 1880, would give a well- 
connected history and complete defense of the important legislation 
of the seventeen eventful years that constitute his parliamentary 
life. Far beyond that, his speeches would befovmd to forecast many 
great measures yet to be completed — measures which he knew were 



1^ Memorial ftnuRESs. 



beyond tht- public opiuiou of the hour, but which he confidently be- 
lit'Vi'd would secure popular apjjioval within the period of his own 
liletiiue and by the aid of his own efforts. 

Differing, as Garfield does, fi'om the brilliant parliamentary leaders, 
it is uot easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the record of Ameri- 
can public life. He iierhaps more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in 
his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. He 
had the love of learning, and the patient industry of investigation, 
to which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence and his Presi- 
dency. He had some of those ponderous elements of mind which 
distinguished Mr. Webster, and which, indeed, in all our public life 
lia\e left the great Massachusetts Senator without an intellectual 
peer. 

In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the 
House of Commons i>resent points of essential difference from Gar- 
field. But some of his methods recall the best features in the strong, 
independent course of Sir Robert Peel, and striking resemblances are 
dLscernible in that most promising of modern conservatives, who died 
too early for his country and his fame, the Lord George Bentinck. He 
had all of Burke's love for the Sublime and the Beautiful, with, pos- 
sibly, something of his superabundance ; and in his faith and his mag- 
nanimity, in his power of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his 
faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth and world of 
illustration, one is reminded of that great English statesman of to- 
day, who, confronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the 
dauutless, reviled by those whom Tie would relieve as bitterly as by 
those whose supposed rights he is forced to invade, still labors with 
serene courage for the amelioration of Ireland and for the honor of the 
English name. 

Garfield's nomination to the Presidency, while not predicted or 
anticipated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in 
Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by 
his then recent election as Senator from Obio, kept him in the public 
eye as a man occupying the very highest rank among those entitled 
to be called statesmen. It was not mere chance that brought 
him this high honor. "We must," says Mr. Emerson, "reckon suc- 
cess a constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust health and has slept 
well and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his 
departure from Greenland, he will steer west and his ships will reach 
Newfoundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder 
man and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hun- 
dred miles farther and reach Labrador and New England. There is 
no chance in results." 

As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was 
met with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, 
and it continued with increasing volume and momentum until the 
close of his victorious campaign : 

No might nor Kreatness in mortality 
Ciiu ceusuro 'acapo; backwoundiiif; ca]umiiy 
Tlio whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong 
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ? 

Under it all he was calm, and strong, and confident ; never lost his 
self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty, or iU-considered 



yVlEMORiAL /Address. 13 



word. Indeed uothing iu his whole life is more remarkable or more 
creditable than his bearing through those five full months of vituper- 
ation — a prolonged agony of trial to a sensitive man, a constant and 
cruel draft upon the powers of moral endurance. The great mass of 
these unjust imputations passed unnoticed, and with the general 
debris of the campaign fell into oblivion. But iu a few instances the 
iron entered his soul and he died with the injury unforgotten if not 
unforgiven. 

One aspect of Garfield's candidacy was unprecedented. Never 
before, in the history of partisan contests in this country, had a 
successful Presidential candidate spoken freely on passing events 
and current issues. To attempt anything of the kind seemed novel, 
rash, and even desperate. The older class of voters recalled the 
unfortunate Alabama letter, in which Mr. Clay was supposed to 
have signed his political death-warrant. They remembered also the 
hot-tempered efi'usion by which General Scott lost a large share of 
his popularity before his nomination, and the unfortunate speeches 
which rapidly consumed the remainder. The younger voters had 
seen Mr. Greeley in a series of vigorous and original addresses 
preparing the pathway for his own defeat. Unmindful of these 
warnings, unheeding the advice of friends, Garfield spoke to large, 
crowds as he journeyed to and from New York in August, to a 
great multitude in that city, to delegations and deputations of every 
kind that called at Mentor during the summer and autumn. With 
innumerable critics, watchful and eager to catch a phrase that might 
be turned into odium or ridicule, or a sentence that might be dis- 
torted to his own or his party's injury, Garfield did not trij) or halt 
in any one of his seventy speeches. This seems all the more remark- 
able when it is remembered that he did not write what he said, and 
yet spoke with such logical consecutiveness of thought and such admi- 
rable precision of phrase as to defy the accident of misreport and 
the malignity of misrepresentation. 

In the beginning of his Presidential life Garfield's experience did 
not yield him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that engross so 
large a portion of the President's time were distasteful to him, and 
were unfavorably contrasted with his legislative work. " I have 
been dealing all these years with ideas," he impatiently exclaimed 
one day, " and here I am dealing only with persons. I have been 
heretofore treating of the fundamental principles of government, and 
here I am considering all day whether A or B shall be appointed to 
this or that oifice." He was earnestly seeking some practical way of 
correcting the evils arising from the distribution of overgrown and 
unwieldy patronage — evils always appreciated and often discussed 
by him, but whose magnitude had been more deeply impressed upon 
his mind since his accession to the Presidency. Had he lived, a com- 
prehensive improvement in the mode of appointment and in the ten- 
ure of oflSce would have been proposed by him, and with the aid of 
Congress no doubt perfected. 

But, while many of the Executive duties were not grateful to him, 
he was assiduous and conscientious in their discharge. From the 
very outset he exhibited administrative talent of a high order. He 
grasped the helm of office with the hand of a master. In this 
respect indeed he constantly surprised many who were most in- 
timately associated with him in the Government, and especially 



14 Memorial ^ddress. 



those who hud t'caicd that he might be lacking iu the executive 
laculty. His di,si)osition of business was orderly and rapid. His 
powt-r of analysis, and his skill in classification, enabled him to dis- 
l)atch a vast mass of detail with singular promptness and ease. His 
CabiiH't meetings were admirably conducted. His clear presentation 
of ollicial subjects, his well-considered suggestion of topics on which 
discussion was invited, his quick decision when all had been heard, 
combiuotl to show a thoroughness of mental training as rare as his 
natural ability and his facile adaptation to a new and enlarged field 
of labor. 

With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the war, 
with a cool calculation of the obstacles in his way, impelled always 
by a generous enthusiasm, Garfield conceived that much might be 
done by his administration towards restoring harmony between the 
different sections of the Union. He was anxious to go South 
and speak to the people. As early as April he had inefiectually 
endeavored to arrange for a trip to Nashville, whither he had been 
cordially invited, and he was again disappointed a few weeks later 
to find that he could not go to South Carolina to attend the centen- 
nial celebration of the victory of the Cowpens. But for the autumn 
he definitely counted on being present at three memorable assemblies 
in the South, the celebration at Yorktown, the opening of the Cotton 
Exposition at Atlanta, and the meeting of the Army of the Cumber- 
land at Chattanooga. He was already turning over in his mind his 
address for each occasion, and the three taken together, he said to a 
tViciid, gave him the exact scope and verge which he needed. At 
Yorktown he would have before him the associations of a hundred 
years that bound the South and the North in the sacred memory of a 
<;ommon danger and a common victory. At Atlanta he would present 
the material interests and the industrial development which appealed 
to the thrift and independence of every household, and which should 
unite the two sections by the instinct of self-interest and self-defense. 
At Chattanooga ho would revive memories of the war only to show 
that after all its disaster and all its sufieriug, the country was 
stronger and greater, the Union rendered indissoluble, and the future, 
through the agony and blood of one generation, made brighter and 
better for all. 

Garfield's ambition for the success of his administration was high. 
With strong caution and conservatism in his nature, he was in no 
danger of atteuiptiiig rasli experiments or of resorting to the empiri- 
cism of statesmanship. But he believed that renewed and closer 
attention should be given to questions aft'ecting the material inter- 
ests and commercial prospects of fifty millions of people. He believed 
t liat our continental relations, extensive and undeveloped as they 
are, involved responsibility, and could be cultivated into profitable 
friendship or be abandoned to harmful inditterence or lasting en- 
mity. He believed with equal confidence that an essential forerun- 
ner to a new era of national ])rogress nuist be a feeling of content- 
ment ill every section of the Union, and a generous belief that the 
benefits and l)urdeus of government would be common to all. Him 
self a coiiNpiciious illustration of what ability and ambition may do 
under rei>iil)licaii institutions, he loved his country with a passion of 
l)atri()lic devotion, aiul every waking thought was given to her ad- 
vuucenieiii. He was an American in all his aspirations, and he 



yVLEMORIAL ftODRESS. 15 



looked to the destiny and iuflueuce of the United States with the 
philosophic composure of Jefferson and the demonstrative confidence 
of John Adams. 

The political events which disturbed the President's serenity for 
many weeks before that fateful day in July form an important chap- 
ter in his career, and, in his own judgment, involved questions of 
principle and of right which are vitally essential to the constitu- 
tional administration of the Federal Government. It would be out 
of place here and now to speak the language of controversy; but the 
events referred to, however they may continue to be source of con- 
tention with others, have become, so far as Garfield is concerned, as 
much a matter of history as his heroism at Chickamauga or his 
illustrious service in the House. Detail is not needful, and personal 
antagonism shall not be rekindled by any word uttered to-day. 
The motives of those opposing him are not to be here adversely in- 
terpreted nor their course harshly characterized. But of the dead 
President this is to be said, and said because his own speech is for- 
ever silenced and he can be no more heard except through the fidel- 
ity and the love of surviving friends : from the beginning to the end 
of the controversy he so much deplored, the President was never for 
one moment actuated by any motive of gain to himself or of loss to 
others. Leastof allmendidheharborrevenge, rarely did he even show 
resentment, and malice was not in his nature. He was congenially 
employed only in the exchange of good offices and the doing of 
kindly deeds. 

There was not an hour, from the beginning of the trouble till the 
fatal shot entered his body, when the President would not gladly, 
for the sake of restoring harmony, have retraced any step he had 
taken if such retracing had merely involved consequences personal 
to himself. The pride of consistency, or any supposed sense of hu- 
miliation that might result from surrendering his position,' had not 
a feather's weight with him. No man was ever less subject to such 
influences from within or from without. But after most anxious de- 
liberation and the coolest survey of all the circumstances, he solemidy 
believed that the true prerogatives of the Executive were involved 
in the issue which had been raised, and that he would be unfaithful to 
his supreme obligation if he failed to maintain, in all ^heir vigor, the 
constitutional rights and dignities of his great office. He believed 
this in all the convictions of conscience when in sound and vigorous 
health, and he believed it in his suffering and prostration in the last 
conscious thought which his wearied mind bestowed on the transitory 
struggles of life. 

More than this need not be said. Less than this could not be said. 
Justice to the dead, the highest obligation that devolves upon the 
living, demands the declaration that in all the bearings of the sub- 
ject, actual or possible, the President was content in his mind, justi- 
fied in his couscience, immovable in his conclusions. 

The religious element in Garfield's character was deep and earnest. 
In his early youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, a sect of 
that great Baptist Communion, which in different ecclesiastical estab- 
lishments is so numerous and so influential throughout all parts of 
the United States. But the broadening tendency of his mind and 
his active spirit of inquiry were early apparent and carried him be- 
yond the dogmas of sect and the restraints of association. In select- 



H; Memorial ,Address. 



iiig a colle<;o in wliich to coiitiuiie bistilncatiou lie rejected Befhany, 
tlimi;ili picsitled over liy Alfxaiuler Campbell, the greatest preacher 
of his rluirch. His roasous were characteristic: first, that Bethany 
leauetl too heavily toward .slavery; and, second, that being himself 
a Disciple and the son of Disciple parents, he had little acqnaintance 
with jieople of other ))eliefs, and he thonght it wonld make him more 
liberal, quoting his own words, both in his religious and general 
views, to go into a new circle and be nnder new influences. 

The liberal tendency which he anticipated as the result of wider 
culture was fully realized. He was emancipated from mere sectarian 
belief, and with' eager interest pushed his investigations in the direc- 
tion of modern progressive thought. He followed with quickening 
step in the paths of exploration and speculation so fearlessly trodden 
by Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyndall, and by other living scientists of 
tiio radical and advanced type. His own church, binding its disci- 
ples by no formulated creed, Init accejiting the Old and New Testa- 
raents'as the word of God with unbiased liberality of private inter- 
pretation, favored, if it did not stimulate, the spirit of investigation. 
Its members profess with sincerity, and profess only, to be of one mind 
and one faith with those who immediately followed the Master, and 
who were lirst called Christians at Antioch. 

But however high Garlield reasoned of " fixed fate, free will, fore- 
knowledge absolute," he was never separated from the Church of the 
Disciples in his uttections and iu his associations. For him it held 
the ark of the covenant. To him it was the gate of Heaven. The 
world of religious belief is full of solecisms and contradictions. A 
]>liilosophic observer declari'S that luen by the thousand Avill die in 
defense of a creed whose doctrines they do not comprehend and whose 
tenets they habitually violate. It is eciually true that men by the 
Thousand will cling to church organizations with instinctive and 
undying tidelity when their l)eli('f in matu er years is radically dif- 
ferent from that which inspired them as neophytes. 

But after this range of speculation, and this latitude of doubt, 
Gartield came l)ack always with freshness and delight to the simpler 
instincts of religious faith, which, earliest implanted, longest sur- 
vive. Not many weeks before his assassination, walking on the banks 
of the Potomac with a friend, and conversing on those topics of per- 
sonal religion, concerning which noble natures have an unoonquera- 
Ide reserve, he said that heXouud the Lord's Prayer and the simple 
jietitions learned in infancy inlinitely restful to him, not merely in 
tlieir stated repetition, Vtnt in their casual and frequent recall as he 
went about the daily duties of life. Certain texts of scripture had 
a very Htrong hold on his memory and his heart. He heard, while in 
Edinburgh some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher who prefaced 
liis sermon with reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans, whiih book had been the subject of careful study with Gar- 
lield during all his religious life. He was greatly impressed by the 
i-loculion of t he i)rea<-her and declared that it had imparted a new and 
deeper meaning to the majestic utterances of St. Paul. He referred 
often in after years to that memorable service, and dwelt with exal- 
tation of feeling u]ion the radiant i>romise and the assured hope with 
which the great .-iiiost le of t lie Gentiles was *'i)ersuaded that neither 
death, nor lite, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 



Memoi^ial ^ddress. 



17 



creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which 13 
in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

The crowuing characteristic of General Garfield's religious opin- 
ions, as, indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberality. In all things 
he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others 
the qualities which he possessed himself— sincerity of conviction and 
frankness of expivssion. With him the inquiry was not so much 
what a man believes, but does he believe it ? The lines of his friend- 
ship and his confidence encircled men of every creed, and men of no 
creed, and to the end of his life, on his ever-lengthening list of friends, 
were to be fouud the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an 
honest-minded and generous-hearted free-thinker. 

On the morning of Saturday, July second, the President was a con- 
tented and happy man— not in au ordinary degree, but joyfully, 
almost boyishly happy. On his way to the railroad station to which 
he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, 
with an unwonted sense of leisure and a keen anticipation of pleas- 
ure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt 
that after four mouths of trial his administration was strong in its 
grasp of afl:air8, strong in popular favor, and destined to grow 
stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration 
had been safely passed ; that trouble lay behind him and not before 
him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recov- 
ering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times 
almost unnerved him ; that he was going to his Ahna Mater to renew 
the most cherished associations of his young manhood, and to ex- 
change greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed 
every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his 
college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift 
of his countrymen. 

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of 
this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well 
have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him ; no 
sUghtest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate 
was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, 
confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The 
next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, dopmed to weary weeks of 
torture, to silence, and the grave. 

Great in life, he was surpassingly great ip death. For no cause, in 
the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of 
murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from 
its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of 
death— and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in 
which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its 
relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks 
of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear 
sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight 
and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell — what brilliant, 
broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, 
warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household 
ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining 
friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of 
her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in 
his; thelittle boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the 



IS 



Memorial ^ddress. 



fair yoimy (laiij;htt>r ; the sturdy sons just springing into closest com- 
l):i II ionslii J), clai mi Mg every day and every day re warding a father's love 
and care ; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all de- 
mand. Uefore him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was 
not shaken, llisoonntrymenwerethrilltd with instant, profound, and 
universal sympathy, jilasterful in his mortal weakness, he became 
the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. 
But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his 
sutt'ering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he 
faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above 
tlie demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. 
With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree. 

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The 
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital 
of i)ain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its 
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. 
Gently, siiefltly, the love of a great people bore the pale sulFerer to the 
longed-for heaiing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within 
sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. 
AVith wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked 
out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders ; on its far sails, 
whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rollii»g shore- 
w.'ird to break and die beneath the noonday sun ; on the red clouds 
of evening, arching low to the horizon ; on the serene and shining 
]iatlnvay of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mys- 
tic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let 
us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great 
waves breaking on a further shore, and felt already upon his wasted 
brow the breath of the eternal morning. 

[The orator on concluding was greeted with most hearty applause, 
in which the whole audience joined.] 



I pQU-.m 



4 



^•^N 



